The Legend of the Trojan War
[This document is in the public domain and thus may be used by
anyone, in whole or in part, without permission and without charge,
provided the source is acknowledged, released May 1999]
[Note: This summary, which has been prepared by Ian Johnston of
Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, for students in
Classics 101 and Liberal Studies, is a brief account of a number of
different old stories about the Trojan war, arranged in more or less
chronological sequence. There are several different, even contradictory,
versions of events. There is no one authoritative narrative of the
whole war. Many of these stories were obviously current before
Homer, and the story continued to be embellished by the Romans
and Medieval writers]
1. The gods Apollo and Poseidon, during a time when they were being
punished by having to work among men, built the city of Troy for
Priam's father, Laomedon. They invited the mortal man Aeacus (the
son of Zeus and Aegina and grandfather of Achilles) to help them,
since destiny had decreed that Troy would one day be captured in a
place built by human hands (so a human being had to help them).
2. When newly constructed, Troy was attacked and captured by
Herakles (Hercules), Telamon (brother of Peleus and therefore the
uncle of Achilles and father of Telamonian Ajax and Teucros), and
Peleus (son of Aeacus and father of Achilles), as a punishment for the
fact that Laomedon had not given Hercules a promised reward of
immortal horses for rescuing Laomedon's daughter Hesione. Telamon
killed Laomedon and took Hesione as a concubine (she was the
mother of Teucros).
3. Priam, King of Troy and son of Laomedon, had a son from his wife
Hekabe (or Hecuba), who dreamed that she had given birth to a
flaming torch. Cassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, foretold
that the new-born son, Paris (also called Alexandros or Alexander),
should be killed at birth or else he would destroy the city. Paris was
taken out to be killed, but he was rescued by shepherds and grew up
away from the city in the farms by Mount Ida. As a young man he
returned to Troy to compete in the athletic games, was recognized,
and returned to the royal family.
4. Peleus (father of Achilles) fell in love with the sea nymph Thetis,
whom Zeus, the most powerful of the gods, also had designs upon.
But Zeus learned of an ancient prophecy that Thetis would give birth
to a son greater than his father, so he gave his divine blessing to the
marriage of Peleus, a mortal king, and Thetis. All the gods were
invited to the celebration, except, by a deliberate oversight, Eris, the
goddess of strife. She came anyway and brought a golden apple, upon
which was written "For the fairest." Hera (Zeus's wife), Aphrodite
(Zeus's daughter), and Athena (Zeus's daughter) all made a claim for
the apple, and they appealed to Zeus for judgment. He refused to
adjudicate a beauty contest between his wife and two of his daughters,
and the task of choosing a winner fell to Paris (while he was still a
herdsman on Mount Ida, outside Troy). The goddesses each promised
Paris a wonderful prize if he would pick her: Hera offered power,
Athena offered military glory and wisdom, and Aphrodite offered him
the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife. In the famous
Judgement of Paris, Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite.
5. Helen, daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, was also the daughter of
Zeus, who had made love to Leda in the shape of a swan (she is the
only female child of Zeus and a mortal). Her beauty was famous
throughout the world. Her father Tyndareus would not agree to any
man's marrying her, until all the Greeks warrior leaders made a
promise that they would collectively avenge any insult to her. When
the leaders made such an oath, Helen then married Menelaus, King of
Sparta. Her twin (non-divine) sister Klytaimnestra (Clytaemnestra),
born at the same time as Helen but not a daughter of Zeus, married
Agamemnon, King of Argos, and brother of Menelaus. Agamemnon
was the most powerful leader in Hellas (Greece).
6. Paris, back in the royal family at Troy, made a journey to Sparta as a
Trojan ambassador, at a time when Menelaus was away. Paris and
Helen fell in love and left Sparta together, taking with them a vast
amount of the city's treasure and returning to Troy via Cranae, an
island off Attica, Sidon, and Egypt, among other places. The Spartans
set off in pursuit but could not catch the lovers. When the Spartans
learned that Helen and Paris were back in Troy, they sent a delegation
(Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and Menelaus, the injured husband) to
Troy demanding the return of Helen and the treasure. When the
Trojans refused, the Spartans appealed to the oath which Tyndareus
had forced them all to take (see 5 above), and the Greeks assembled
an army to invade Troy, asking all the allies to meet in preparation for
embarkation at Aulis. Some stories claimed that the real Helen never
went to Troy, for she was carried off to Egypt by the god Hermes,
and Paris took her double to Troy.
7. Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, was educated as a young
man by Chiron, the centaur (half man and half horse). One of the
conditions of Achilles's parents' marriage (the union of a mortal with a
divine sea nymph) was that the son born to them would die in war
and bring great sadness to his mother. To protect him from death in
battle his mother bathed the infant in the waters of the river Styx,
which conferred invulnerability to any weapon. And when the Greeks
began to assemble an army, Achilles's parents hid him at Scyros
disguised as a girl. While there he met Deidameia, and they had a son
Neoptolemos (also called Pyrrhus). Calchas, the prophet with the
Greek army, told Agamemnon and the other leaders that they could
not conquer Troy without Achilles. Odysseus found Achilles by
tricking him; Odysseus placed a weapon out in front of the girls of
Scyros, and Achilles reached for it, thus revealing his identity.
Menoitios, a royal counsellor, sent his son Patroclus to accompany
Achilles on the expedition as his friend and advisor.
8. The Greek fleet of one thousand ships assembled at Aulis.
Agamemnon, who led the largest contingent, was the commander-inchief. The army was delayed for a long time by contrary winds, and
the future of the expedition was threatened as the forces lay idle.
Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis by an impious boast,
and Artemis had sent the winds. Finally, in desperation to appease the
goddess, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia. Her father
lured her to Aulis on the pretext that she was to be married to
Achilles (whose earlier marriage was not known), but then he
sacrificed her on the high altar. One version of her story claims that
Artemis saved her at the last minute and carried her off to Tauris
where she became a priestess of Artemis in charge of human
sacrifices. While there, she later saved Orestes and Pylades. In any
case, after the sacrifice Artemis changed the winds, and the fleet sailed
for Troy.
9. On the way to Troy, Philoctetes, the son of Poeas and leader of the
seven ships from Methone, suffered a snake bite when the Greeks
landed at Tenedos to make a sacrifice. His pain was so great and his
wound so unpleasant (especially the smell) that the Greek army
abandoned him against his will on the island.
10. The Greek army landed on the beaches before Troy. The first man
ashore, Protesilaus, was killed by Hector, son of Priam and leader of
the Trojan army. The Greeks sent another embassy to Troy, seeking
to recover Helen and the treasure. When the Trojans denied them, the
Greek army settled down into a siege which lasted many years.
11. In the tenth year of the war (where the narrative of the Iliad
begins), Agamemnon insulted Apollo by taking as a slave-hostage the
girl Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, a prophet of Apollo, and
refusing to return her when her father offered compensation. In
revenge, Apollo sent nine days of plague down upon the Greek army.
Achilles called an assembly to determine what the Greeks should do.
In that assembly, he and Agamemnon quarrelled bitterly, Agamemnon
confiscated from Achilles his slave girl Briseis, and Achilles, in a rage,
withdrew himself and his forces (the Myrmidons) from any further
participation in the war. He asked his mother, Thetis, the divine sea
nymph, to intercede on his behalf with Zeus to give the Trojans help
in battle, so that the Greek forces would recognize how foolish
Agamemnon had been to offend the best soldier under his command.
Thetis made the request of Zeus, reminding him of a favour she had
once done for him, warning him about a revolt against his authority,
and he agreed.
12. During the course of the war, numerous incidents took place, and
many died on both sides. Paris and Menelaus fought a duel, and
Aphrodite saved Paris just as Menelaus was about to kill him. Achilles,
the greatest of the Greek warriors, slew Cycnus, Troilus, and many
others. He also, according to various stories, was a lover of Patroclus,
Troilus, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, Helen, and Medea. Odysseus
and Diomedes slaughtered thirteen Thracians (Trojan allies) and stole
the horses of King Rhesus in a night raid. Telamonian Ajax (the
Greater Ajax) and Hector fought a duel with no decisive result. A
common soldier, Thersites, challenged the authority of Agamemnon
and demanded that the soldiers abandon the expedition. Odysseus
beat Thersites into obedience. In the absence of Achilles and
following Zeus's promise to Thetis (see 11), Hector enjoyed great
success against the Greeks, breaking through their defensive ramparts
on the beach and setting the ships on fire.
13. While Hector was enjoying his successes against the Greeks, the
latter sent an embassy to Achilles, requesting him to return to battle.
Agamemnon offered many rewards in compensation for his initial
insult (see 11). Achilles refused the offer but did say that he would
reconsider if Hector ever reached the Greek ships. When Hector did
so, Achilles's friend Patroclus (see 7) begged to be allowed to return to
the fight. Achilles gave him permission, advising Patroclus not to
attack the city of Troy itself. He also gave Patroclus his own suit of
armour, so that the Trojans might think that Achilles had returned to
the war. Patroclus resumed the fight, enjoyed some dazzling success
(killing one of the leaders of the Trojan allies, Sarpedon from Lykia),
but he was finally killed by Hector, with the help of Apollo.
14. In his grief over the death of his friend Patroclus, Achilles decided
to return to the battle. Since he had no armour (Hector had stripped
the body of Patroclus and had put on the armour of Achilles), Thetis
asked the divine artisan Hephaestus, the crippled god of the forge, to
prepare some divine armour for her son. Hephaestus did so, Thetis
gave the armour to Achilles, and he returned to the war. After
slaughtering many Trojans, Achilles finally cornered Hector alone
outside the walls of Troy. Hector chose to stand and fight rather than
to retreat into the city, and he was killed by Achilles, who then
mutilated the corpse, tied it to his chariot, and dragged it away.
Achilles built a huge funeral pyre for Patroclus, killed Trojan soldiers
as sacrifices, and organized the funeral games in honour of his dead
comrade. Priam travelled to the Greek camp to plead for the return of
Hector's body, and Achilles relented and returned it to Priam in
exchange for a ransom.
15. In the tenth year of the war the Amazons, led by Queen
Penthesilea, joined the Trojan forces. She was killed in battle by
Achilles, as was King Memnon of Ethiopa, who had also recently
reinforced the Trojans. Achilles's career as the greatest warrior came
to an end when Paris, with the help of Apollo, killed him with an
arrow which pierced him in the heel, the one vulnerable spot, which
the waters of the River Styx had not touched because his mother had
held him by the foot (see 7) when she had dipped the infant Achilles
in the river. Telamonian Ajax, the second greatest Greek warrior after
Achilles, fought valiantly in defense of Achilles's corpse. At the
funeral of Achilles, the Greeks sacrificed Polyxena, the daughter of
Hecuba, wife of Priam. After the death of Achilles, Odysseus and
Telamonian Ajax fought over who should get the divine armour of
the dead hero. When Ajax lost the contest, he went mad and
committed suicide. In some versions, the Greek leaders themselves
vote and decide to award the armour to Odysseus.
16. The Greeks captured Helenus, a son of Priam, and one of the
chief prophets in Troy. Helenus revealed to the Greeks that they
could not capture Troy without the help of Philoctetes, who owned
the bow and arrows of Hercules and whom the Greeks had
abandoned on Tenedos (see 9 above). Odysseus and Neoptolemus
(the son of Achilles) set out to persuade Philoctetes, who was angry at
the Greeks for leaving him alone on the island, to return to the war,
and by trickery they succeeded. Philoctetes killed Paris with an arrow
shot from the bow of Hercules.
17. Odysseus and Diomedes ventured into Troy at night, in disguise,
and stole the Palladium, the sacred statue of Athena, which was
supposed to give the Trojans the strength to continue the war. The
city, however, did not fall. Finally the Greeks devised the strategy of
the wooden horse filled with armed soldiers. It was built by Epeius
and left in front of Troy. The Greek army then withdrew to Tenedos
(an island off the coast), as if abandoning the war. Odysseus went into
Troy disguised, and Helen recognized him. But he was sent away by
Hecuba, the wife of Priam, after Helen told her. The Greek soldier
Sinon stayed behind when the army withdrew and pretended to the
Trojans that he had deserted from the Greek army because he had
information about a murder Odysseus had committed. He told the
Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena and that the Greeks
had built it to be so large that the Trojans could not bring it into their
city. The Trojan Laocoon warned the Trojans not to believe Sinon ("I
fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts"); in the midst of his
warnings a huge sea monster came from the surf and killed Laocoon
and his sons.
18. The Trojans determined to get the Trojan Horse into their city.
They tore down a part of the wall, dragged the horse inside, and
celebrated their apparent victory. At night, when the Trojans had
fallen asleep, the Greek soldiers hidden in the horse came out, opened
the gates, and gave the signal to the main army which had been hiding
behind Tenedos. The city was totally destroyed. King Priam was
slaughtered at the altar by Achilles's son Neoptolemos. Hector's infant
son, Astyanax, was thrown off the battlements. The women were
taken prisoner: Hecuba (wife of Priam), Cassandra (daughter of
Priam), and Andromache (wife of Hector). Helen was returned to
Menelaus.
19. The gods regarded the sacking of Troy and especially the
treatment of the temples as a sacrilege, and they punished many of the
Greek leaders. The fleet was almost destroyed by a storm on the
journey back. Menelaus's ships sailed all over the sea for seven years—
to Egypt (where, in some versions, he recovered his real wife in the
court of King Proteus—see 6 above). Agamemnon returned to Argos,
where he was murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra and her lover,
Aegisthus. Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had claimed as a concubine
after the destruction of Troy, was also killed by Clytaemnestra.
Aegisthus was seeking revenge for what the father of Agamemnon
(Atreus) had done to his brother (Aegisthus' father) Thyestes. Atreus
had given a feast for Thyestes in which he fed to him the cooked flesh
of his own children (see the family tree of the House of Atreus given
below). Clytaemnestra claimed that she was seeking revenge for the
sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia (see 8 above).
20. Odysseus (called by the Romans Ulysses) wandered over the sea
for many years before reaching home. He started with a number of
ships, but in a series of misfortunes, lasting ten years because of the
enmity of Poseidon, the god of the sea, he lost all his men before
returning to Ithaca alone. His adventures took him from Troy to
Ismareos (land of the Cicones); to the land of the Lotos Eaters, the
island of the cyclops (Poseidon, the god of the sea, became
Odysseus's enemy when Odysseus put out the eye of Polyphemus, the
cannibal cyclops, who was a son of Poseidon); to the cave of Aeolos
(god of the winds), to the land of the Laestrygonians, to the islands of
Circe and Calypso, to the underworld (where he talked to the ghost of
Achilles); to the land of the Sirens, past the monster Scylla and the
whirlpool Charybdis, to the pastures of the cattle of Helios, the sun
god, to Phaiacia. Back in Ithaca in disguise, with the help of his son
Telemachus and some loyal servants, he killed the young princes who
had been trying to persuade his wife, Penelope, to marry one of them
and who had been wasting the treasure of the palace and trying to kill
Telemachus. Odysseus proved who he was by being able to string the
famous bow of Odysseus, a feat which no other man could manage,
and by describing for Penelope the secret of their marriage bed, that
Odysseus had built it around an old olive tree.
21. After the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytaemnestra (see
19 above), his son Orestes returned with a friend Pylades to avenge
his father. With the help of his sister Electra (who had been very badly
treated by her mother, left either unmarried or married to a poor
farmer so that she would have no royal children), Orestes killed his
mother and Aegisthus. Then he was pursued by the Furies, the
goddesses of blood revenge. Suffering fits of madness, Orestes fled to
Delphi, then to Tauri, where, in some versions, he met his long-lost
sister, Iphigeneia. She had been rescued from Agamemnon's sacrifice
by the gods and made a priestess of Diana in Tauri. Orestes escaped
with Iphigeneia to Athens. There he was put on trial for the matricide.
Apollo testified in his defense. The jury vote was even; Athena cast
the deciding vote in Orestes's favour. The outraged Furies were
placated by being given a permanent place in Athens and a certain
authority in the judicial process. They were then renamed the
Eumenides (The Kindly Ones). Orestes was later tried for the same
matricide in Argos, at the insistence of Tyndareus, Clytaemnestra's
father. Orestes and Electra were both sentenced to death by stoning.
Orestes escaped by capturing Helen and using her as a hostage.
22. Neoptolemus, the only son of Achilles, married Hermione, the
only daughter of Helen and Menelaus. Neoptolemus also took as a
wife the widow of Hector, Andromache. There was considerable
jealously between the two women. Orestes had wished to marry
Hermione; by a strategy he arranged it so that the people of Delphi
killed Neoptolemus. Then he carried off Hermione and married her.
Menelaus tried to kill the son of Neoptolemus, Molossus, and
Andromache, but Peleus, Achilles's father, rescued them.
Andromache later married Helenus. Orestes's friend Pylades married
Electra, Orestes sister.
23. Aeneas, the son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite and one
of the important Trojan leaders in the Trojan War, fled from the city
while the Greeks were destroying it, carrying his father, Anchises, his
son Ascanius, and his ancestral family gods with him. Aeneas
wandered all over the Mediterranean. On his journey to Carthage, he
had an affair with Dido, Queen of Carthage. He abandoned her
without warning, in accordance with his mission to found another
city. Dido committed suicide in grief. Aeneas reached Italy and there
fought a war against Turnus, the leader of the local Rutulian people.
He did not found Rome but Lavinium, the main centre of the Latin
league, from which the people of Rome sprang. Aeneas thus links the
royal house of Troy with the Roman republic.
The Cultural Influence of the Legend of the Trojan War
No story in our culture, with the possible exception of the Old
Testament and the story of Jesus Christ, has inspired writers and
painters over the centuries more than the Trojan War. It was the
fundamental narrative in Greek education (especially in the version
passed down by Homer, which covers only a small part of the total
narrative), and all the tragedians whose works survive wrote plays
upon various aspects of it, and these treatments, in turn, helped to add
variations to the traditional story. No one authoritative work defines
all the details of the story outlined above.
Unlike the Old Testament narratives, which over time became
codified in a single authoritative version, the story of the Trojan War
exists as a large collection of different versions of the same events (or
parts of them). The war has been interpreted as a heroic tragedy, as a
fanciful romance, as a satire against warfare, as a love story, as a
passionately anti-war tale, and so on. Just as there is no single version
which defines the "correct" sequence of events, so there is no single
interpretative slant on how one should understand the war. Homer's
poems enjoyed a unique authority, but they tell only a small part of
the total story.
The following notes indicate only a few of the plays, novels, and
poems which have drawn on and helped to shape this ancient story.
1. The most famous Greek literary stories of the war are Homer's Iliad
and Odyssey, our first two epic poems, composed for oral recitation
probably in the eighth century before Christ. The theme of the Iliad is
the wrath of Achilles at the action of Agamemnon, and the epic
follows the story of Achilles's withdrawal from the war and his
subsequent return (see paragraphs 11, 12, 13, and 14 above). The
Odyssey tells the story of the return of Odysseus from the war (see 20
above). A major reason for the extraordinary popularity and fecundity
of the story of the Trojan War is the unquestioned quality and
authority of these two great poems, even though they tell only a small
part of the total narrative and were for a long time unavailable in
Western Europe (after they were lost to the West, they did not appear
until the fifteenth century). The Iliad was the inspiration for the
archaeological work of Schliemann in the nineteenth century, a search
which resulted in the discovery of the site of Troy at Hissarlik, in
modern Turkey.
2. The Greek tragedians, we know from the extant plays and many
fragments, found in the story of the Trojan War their favorite
material, focusing especially on the events after the fall of the city.
Aeschylus's famous trilogy, The Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choephoroi
[Libation Bearers], and Eumenides [The Kindly Ones]), tells of the murder
of Agamemnon and Cassandra by Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, the
revenge of Orestes, and the trial for the matricide. Both Sophocles
and Euripides wrote plays about Electra, and Euripides also wrote a
number of plays based on parts the larger story: The Trojan Women,
The Phoenissae, Orestes, Helen, and Iphigeneia in Tauris (see 21 and 22
above). Sophocles also wrote Philoctetes (see 16) and Ajax (see 15) on
events in the Trojan War.
3. Greek philosophers and historians used the Trojan War as a
common example to demonstrate their own understanding of human
conduct. So Herodotus and Thucydides, in defining their approach to
the historical past, both offer an analysis of the origins of the war.
Plato's Republic uses many parts of Homer's epics to establish
important points about political wisdom (often citing Homer as a
negative example). Alexander the Great carried a copy of the Iliad
around with him in a special royal casket which he had captured from
Darius, King of the Persians.
4. The Romans also adopted the story. Their most famous epic,
Virgil's Aeneid, tells the story of Aeneas (see 23). And in the middle
ages, the Renaissance, and right up to the present day, writers have
retold parts of the ancient story. These adaptations often make
significant changes in the presentation of particular characters, notably
Achilles, who in many versions becomes a knightly lover, and
Odysseus/Ulysses, who is often a major villain. Ulysses) and
Diomedes appear in Dante's Inferno. Of particular note are Chaucer's
and Shakespeare's treatments of the story of Troilus and Cressida.
Modern writers who have drawn on the literary tradition of this
ancient cycle of stories include Sartre (The Flies), O'Neill (Mourning
Becomes Electra), Giradoux (Tiger at the Gates), Joyce (Ulysses), Eliot,
Auden, and many others. In addition, the story has formed the basis
for operas and ballets, and the story of Odysseus has been made into a
mini-series for television. This tradition is a complicated one,
however, because many writers, especially in Medieval times, had no
direct knowledge of the Greek sources and re-interpreted the details
in very non-Greek ways (e.g., Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare).
Homer's text, for example, was generally unknown in Western Europe
until the late fifteenth century.
5. For the past two hundred years there has been a steady increase in
the popularity of Homer's poems (and other works dealing with parts
of the legend) translated into English. Thus, in addition to the various
modern adaptations of parts of the total legend of the Trojan war
(e.g., Brad Pitt's Troy), the ancient versions are still very current.
The Royal House of Atreus
The most famous (or notorious) human family in Western literature is
the House of Atreus, the royal family of Mycenae. To follow the brief
outline below, consult the simplified family tree in p. 279 of the text
of Aeschylus's play. Note that different versions of the story offer
modifications of the family tree.
The family of Atreus suffered from an ancestral crime, variously
described. Most commonly Tantalus, son of Zeus and Pluto, stole the
food of the gods. In another version he kills his son Pelops and feeds
the flesh to the gods (who later, when they discover what they have
eaten, bring Pelops back to life). Having eaten the food of the gods,
Tantalus is immortal and so cannot be killed. In Homer's Odyssey,
Tantalus is punished everlastingly in the underworld.
The family curse originates with Pelops, who won his wife
Hippodamia in a chariot race by cheating and betraying and killing his
co-conspirator (who, as he was drowning, cursed the family of
Pelops). The curse blighted the next generation: the brothers Atreus
and Thyestes quarrelled. Atreus killed Thyestes's sons and served
them to their father at a reconciliation banquet.
To obtain revenge, Thyestes fathered a son on his surviving child, his
daughter Pelopia. This child was Aegisthus, whose task it was to
avenge the murder of his brothers. When Agamemnon set off for
Troy (sacrificing his daughter Iphigeneia so that the fleet could sail
from Aulis), Aegisthus seduced Clytaemnestra and established himself
as a power in Argos.
When Agamemnon returned, Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus killed him
(and his captive Cassandra)--Aegisthus in revenge for his brothers,
Clytaemnestra in revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. Orestes at the
time was away, and Electra had been disgraced.
Orestes returned to Argos to avenge his father. With the help of a
friend, Pylades, and his sister Electra, he succeeded by killing his
mother, Clytaemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. After many
adventures (depending upon the narrative) he finally received
absolution for the matricide, and the curse was over.
Many Greek poets focused on this story. Homer repeatedly mentions
the murder of Agamemnon in the Odyssey and the revenge of Orestes
on Aegisthus (paying no attention to the murder of Clytaemnestra);
Aeschylus's great trilogy The Oresteia is the most famous classical
treatment of the tale; Sophocles and Euripides both wrote plays on
Orestes and Electra.
One curious note is the almost exact parallel between the story of
Orestes in this family tale and the story of Hamlet. These two stories
arose, it seems, absolutely independently of each other, and yet in
many crucial respects are extraordinarily similar. This match has
puzzled many a comparative literature scholar and invited all sorts of
psychological theories about the trans-cultural importance of
matricide as a theme.